Aug. 10, 1974: Music Trivia TV show with deejays Frankie Nestro and Lenny Rico

A couple Buffalo deejays decide to take their talents to television. 

Aug. 10, 1974

‘Music Trivia’ Game for Insomniacs Set on Ch. 2 

HIS NAME WAS Howie Messing and by now he’s probably making a killing on Wall Street and jetting around with Princess Radziwill in his spare time.

          Aside from exuding a special kind of social grace that ordinary, schlep-along college guys hate, he had a head full of more oddities and entities than your grandmother’s attic.

          His favorite mind game back then in the late doo-wop days, when he wasn’t breaking the hearts of sorority girls, was winning drinks from dudes who dared to try stumping him on rock ‘n roll songs.

          Howie needed no names, no titles. All you had to provide was eight bars of intro. He’d do the rest.

          Before you could get out all of diddy diddy diddy diddy-DOUM, the answer would stop you. “Rock ‘N Roll Is Here to Stay.” Danny and The Juniors.

          The unstumpable Howie flashed to mind as Frankie Nestro and Lenny Rico rolled out the pilot program for their new late-night “Music Trivia” program the other day at the WGR-TV, Ch. 2 studios.

          On this half-hour show, which begins a trial run Aug. 23 for seven Friday nights following NBC-TV’s “The Midnight Special,” Howie’d be about as welcome as a cold sore. I mean, who wants to watch some wise guy field questions you don’t even want to know the answers to?

          What “Music Trivia” aims for is not blinding expertise, but more of a friendly jostling of common capabilities, a bit like the show whose set the pilot program was videotaped on – “Bowling For Dollars.”

* * *

“THIS IS FOR average people,” Frank confirms. “For the average Joe on the street. We’re not gonna ask them real hard questions, you know?”

          The format is pure parlor game. At 2:30 a.m., it would be foolhardy to attempt anything more difficult. A local band comes on and does an opening number – the reconstituted Road will be on one of the first shows – then out strolls Frank in a tuxedo to introduce and quiz the contestants.

          For the pilot (which won’t be aired), there was a Hamburg mailman, a young mother and a Kenmore garage owner who had all the moves of perplexed father in a situation comedy.

          They matched songs to singers at $5 a shot, listened to a record for a multiple choice on what year it was popular (the toughest was a giddy-up instrumental called “Wheels” – 1950, 1957 or 1961, you have 20 seconds) and identified stars from initials after a clue or two.

          Easy mental exercise, but enough of a challenge to keep it interesting.

* * *

FOR CLOSERS, there’s a tie-breaker round, a special question where the contestants play for write-in folks, and another song from the band.

          Frank and Lenny could’ve put “Music Trivia” into the edges of prime time, but opted for the late hour for two reasons. The rates for commercials are less expensive and the competition is mostly test patterns.

          “We’re trying to innovate something in night-time TV,” says Lenny. “Especially Friday night when people come home late. We’ll have local groups and bring on some local deejays that ordinarily you never get a chance to see.”

          The idea is an outgrowth not only of Frank and Lenny’s desire to put local music and local personalities back on the tube, but also of Frank’s musical quiz contest ads that run regularly in TV Topics.

          “The response to the contest is great,” Frank says. “And I know people play it at home just for fun and never turn in their answers.

          “People stop me on the street and say: ‘I think I got the answer to the third question.’”

* * *

THIS ISN’T the first time Frank, who’s been Motown Records promo man in the area for seven years, has turned his hand to television. He’s had specials on WUTV, Ch. 29, and Amherst Cablevision.

          And it’s one of many collaborations between Frank and Lenny – who was a deejay hereabouts from 1957 (“I started out as Mac McGuire on WNIA,” he recollects) until he retired from WWOL about three years ago.

          In the early ‘60s, the two of them barnstormed the Blatz Brothers theater circuit along the Southern Tier and Northern Pennsylvania, Lenny putting on record hops and Frank singing.

          Their teamwork goes back even further – to when they were running dances in the old Dellwood Ballroom after Lucky Pierre left – at a time when Frank was evolving from a shy Grover Cleveland High School track star into a singer.

* * *

“I WAS discovered at a Bryant & Stratton party,” Frank says. “A friend and I were sitting around singing and somebody approached us and asked if we’d like to sing for a few dances. We got a band together and after a while we started doing Russ Syracuse record hops.”

          The group was called the Del-Tones and put out just one record, “You’re The One,” in 1961 before going on to break up two years later.

          “I started singing on my own in places like the Clardon, the Town Casino,” Frank says. “I went to California and did a shot on ‘Rawhide’ and did the bandstand shows in practically every city in the country. I almost did ‘American Bandstand.’

          “But after I got into it, I found out how hard it is to get records played. You could sing all you want across the country, but all you do is make a living. It wasn’t worth it.”

* * *

LENNY QUIT spinning records for about the same reasons. He’s an independent home improvement contractor now, but keeps his radio talents together over a weekly Italian show on WHLD, which he does with his father.

          “We’ve got a studio set up in my old bedroom at home,” he says. “My father does the Italian and I do the English. I’ve also run a few Italian shows in Canada.”

          He used the DeFranco Family – Lenny’s father is Tony DeFranco’s godfather – on those shows back when the DeFrancos lived in Welland. Now he has a new group out of St. Catharines he thinks will follow in their footsteps.

          “The Spinosas,” he says. “There are five kids. The 7-year-old does choreography and sings like a little Donny Osmond.”

          Lenny plans to record them and they’ll probably appear on “Music Trivia.”

* * *

ALTHOUGH Frank is ready to shoot for a patent on a tougher “Music Trivia” parlor game board if the show goes well, he insists he’s not in this to become a TV celebrity.

          “TV stardom is long gone from my eyes,” he says. “I just like to work with people and I want a lotta people to benefit from it.”

          “All we really wanta do,” Lenny adds, “is have fun. The pilot show wasn’t like being on TV at all. It was like a party.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Frankie Nestro, left, and Lenny Rico in the WGR-TV studio.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Here we turn to that resourceful archivist and vintage record store owner Bob the Record Guy, who has quite a bit to say on his wny.fm website about Frankie Nestro and the singles he made in the late 1950s.

Bob says Frankie worked for nine years as a deejay at the Three Coins on Niagara Falls Boulevard and more than 30 years aboard ships of the Royal Caribbean cruise lines. He also notes that “Music Trivia” lasted 13 weeks. Bob consulted with Frank in 2014 for his commentaries on those old records and mentioned that he still was deejaying.

Lenny Rico, younger brother of legendary Buffalo jazz deejay Joe Rico, kept his father’s “Casa Rico” show going after the elder Rico died in the 1980s. Renowned as the longest running ethnic program in radio history, it aired weekends for many years on WJJL, 1440 AM. Lenny retired after the station was sold in 2020 and became WEBR, but the show is still carrying on from 10 a.m. to noon Sundays with a new host. It’s now called “Italian Gold.”